Facebook Begins Testing Facebook Lite, A Faster Simpler Version Of The Service

12
Aug

Facebook Begins Testing Facebook Lite, A Faster Simpler Version Of The Service

author: editor category: TechCrunch

It looks like Facebook has just this instant turned on a feature called “Facebook Lite” for some users to test out, because we’re getting bombarded by tips about it.

So what is it? Well, it looks to be exactly what it says it is, a lighter version of Facebook. The beta tester message reads:

We are building a faster, simpler version of Facebook that we call Facebook Lite. It’s not finished yet and we have plenty of kinks to work out, but we would love to get your feedback on what we have built so far.

The URL for the feature is http://lite.facebook.com. So far, users are reporting not seeing much different about the site, if anything.

You’ll recall that MySpace launched a “lite” version for its profiles in April.

Update: Okay, while it seems that most of the users who are getting this message now are not seeing much different, earlier this week, it looks like a very select few may have gotten a sneak peak at Facebook Lite. According to their tweets on it, it appears to be a more Twitter-like. One user notes that it, “looks like a simplified version of twitter with comments enabled. On 2nd thought, it looks like simplified FriendFeed.”

That is of course very interesting since Facebook just bought FriendFeed for around $50 million yesterday.

Update 2: We just found a screenshot of what this apparently looks like. Again, this was taken a few days ago.